Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley

Comic Jumper tells the story of Captain Smiley, who has a side kick named Star that is attached to his body. Together the two must enter the world of four different types of comics, fixing their plots. With each comic jump, the art style of the game changes to fit it.

Comic Jumper is an XBLA game that is exclusive to the system as well as The Maw and ‘Splosion Man. All three are co-published by Microsoft and created by an independent company known as Twisted Pixel Games.

This is a 2D side-scrolling game where you get to pretty much beat up everything that gets in your way. To keep the game fresh, there are parts where Comic Jumper is 3D, hand-to-hand combat moments, 2D vehicle stages and button events similar to God of War. When going into these different types of modes, it plays well with Comic Jumper and doesn’t feel out of place.

Now having a hero that has a smiley face for a head and a talking star on his chest has to be funny, right? Thankfully it is and it’s apparent as soon as you start the game up. The game is a bit hard at times and there isn’t an option to change the difficulty level. If you quit during a mission you have to start that mission, or comic, over again. These two elements are pretty much the only downsides to this game.

A nice little thing that Comic Jumper does, that not many games do, is add in real life cut scenes. I was shocked when I saw my first one and it was a nice kind of shock. There are special attacks that Captain Smiley can preform and it consists of members of the development team of Twisted Pixel showing up on screen to attack the enemies. It also has its own original songs and score that is pleasant to listen to. Comic Jumper reminds me a bit of Matt Hazard where it has elements of other games mixed in, like Mega Man and Final Fantasy VII and it pokes fun of Twisted Pixel’s games and even allows you to preview their other two games while playing Comic Jumper.

This game is a lot of fun to play and kudos to Twisted Pixel for making it funny and enjoyable. If you like to laugh while playing a game and beating up what seems like endless stream of enemies, then pick up this game, you won’t be disappointed. It’s the little things in this game that make it so much fun to play.